The Faraway War: Personal Diaries of the Second World War in Asia and The Pacific

Now in paperback, Aldrich’s second fascinating volume of diaries originally published to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war against the Japanese.Following the illuminating first-hand revelations about the war in Europe and the Middle East compiled in Witness to War, Richard Aldrich now taps into another vast range of diarists to explore the Second World War in the Pacific. From the dramatic bombing of Pearl Harbor to the devastating moment when the atomic bomb was dropped upon Hiroshima, the war is brought to life through the diaries of people on all sides. With events recorded as they happened we are drawn into a chronological account of the war by Aldrich’s expert month-by-month commentary.The Faraway War offers a stunning and diverse array of diaries, focusing both on ordinary people, some of whose diaries are published here for the first time, and on more celebrated figures such as Evelyn Waugh, Charles Lindbergh, Harry Truman and Joyce Grenfell. With this second volume, Richard Aldrich now completes the picture that he began with Witness to War, by creating an intimate and illuminating portrait of a whole world ravaged by war.